


and i've been a forest fire

by unspuncreature



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Casual Sex, Character Study, Emotionally Repressed, F/F, Female Anakin Skywalker, Female Obi-Wan Kenobi, First Kiss, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala and Anakin Skywalker Are Not Together, Until it isn't, she's not mentioned but i like to imagine that they're something like platonic soulmates, until they're not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:27:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29363262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unspuncreature/pseuds/unspuncreature
Summary: They don't kiss, as a rule, but Anakin can't keep the image of Obi-Wan's parted lips out of her mind. It's all she thinks about.Requited feelings and then some, told in two parts.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	and i've been a forest fire

**Author's Note:**

> yes the title is a mitski lyric don't @ me

_I burned so long so quiet you must have wondered_

_if I loved you back. I did, I did, I do._

— Annelyse Gelman, “The Pillowcase”

* * *

The war changes them by moonlight. 

In darkened alcoves and starship hallways and ramshackle tents, they form themselves to the shape of each other. They pretend to know each other better than by day. They play house with the lights off. They lace their fingers together in the dark and whisper treacherous things into the crooks of each other's necks, to the backs of their hands, to their shadows. They walk these lines carefully, wobbling on unsteady legs, newly foaled. 

Anakin thinks she's dying. Obi-Wan is killing her without even meaning to. It's all those harmless, little things. The way a sliver of light can caress her dirt-streaked cheek the way her hand never will. The way her hands tremble and shake until Anakin finds her alone in their tent in the bloody aftermath of any number of battles, unclips their sabers, and peels her layers off so slowly. How she can't seem to look at her any way but sideways, like it hurts too much to face her head on, like looking at the sun.

They don't kiss, as a rule, but Anakin can't keep the image of Obi-Wan's parted lips out of her mind. It's all she thinks about. The way her clever tongue peeks out just so over her lip where she worries it with her teeth. The slick inside of her cheek, barely visible when her jaw clicks open, mouth parted, panting, pink.

Anakin is watching Obi-Wan call orders into her com when she takes two blaster bolts to the shoulder to the thought of scraping her tongue against Obi-Wan's soft palate, wondering how her secrets taste. 

Even hours later, having her tendons and sinews knit back together hurts less than the raw emotion still etched in the knit of Obi-Wan's brow. Kix pretends not to notice her heart rate spike when Obi-Wan ducks out to return to the field, pretends not to notice the way she works her jaw to hold back a scream when Plo's holo-projection passes down orders to return to Coruscant effective immediately, firm but gentle. It doesn't soften the blow.

She doesn't miss Ahsoka's stricken face, the disappointment in her eyes, as her small blue figure flickers with the signal and steps away from Master Koon's side as she steps out of view.

Ten days grounded and then she can return to the field. Physical therapy leaves her evenings empty, renders her useless. She drifts around her quarters, tinkers with the usual things. Decides the toaster needs its heat setting recalibrated three times in one afternoon. 

Ahsoka splits her time between lessons, training, and hers and Anakin's quarters. It's nice until it's not, until the companionable silence turns to hovering, and Anakin reluctantly shoos her away. She almost immediately regrets it. She's not used to being alone. It gives her too much time to think. She doesn't like the places she goes when her mind is left to wander.

Obi-Wan is older in her daydreams. Or maybe she's just younger in the dark, where she's real and whole and the weight of the world is lighter. The bags under her eyes disappear into the hot flush of her cheeks. Maybe the gray at her temples fades with the pretense. Sometimes Anakin imagines fitting her hand perfectly against the old bruises on her thighs, fingers clenching, servos whirring, and her breath snags in her chest. 

Maybe it's just a trick of the light.

She never gets the chance to check, to hold the image up to the sun. It's nothing like the holovids, all crisp white sheets, and morning breath kisses. The guy always says something cheesy and the girl turns her face into the pillow, bashful. They yawn and stretch and pad out to the kitchen where they pull juice from the conservator and drink after each other, straight from the bottle, without thinking twice. Absent open mouth kisses, like ghosts. 

What they have now isn't like that. There are no lazy mornings in wartime. The cot is always half empty when she wakes.

Maybe it's for the best. Anakin knows she couldn't handle the sight of Obi-Wan's pitiful sleepy face blinking owlishly up at her, ripped from her slumber by the screaming. The first time she'd woken her Master with her nightmares, blaring across the fresh green branches of their training bond, haunts her even now.

It's one of those many sleepless nights when it hits her. Even on her mandated leave, in her room in her bed in the temple, surrounded by halls teeming with love and life by the thousands, she's never felt lonelier, never felt further from home. Even the warm thrum of her Padawan's signature from across the hall makes her heart clench. Her bare chest is cold against her thighs where she sits up in bed, knees huddled up to her chin in the dark. 

She could turn on the light, tilt her jaw up in the 'fresher mirror to see the purple petal blooming on her pulse point. If she pressed her fingers to her neck she could feel the ache still clawing at the back of her throat. She could roll her shoulder back in circles until the dull pain felt like an apology. She could test the words in her mouth, roll them around until they stopped choking her up like bile, thick and sharp.

_Do you love me? Will you have me anyway?_

The words won't come. She wasn't made for these tender things. Knows it like she knows her skin. She was made to bring balance. It almost seems like a punchline. 

She sucks in a breath and snuffs out the thought, straightens her legs, kicks back the sheets. Maybe she'll have better luck finding sleep another night.

Her ankles pop as she stretches out of bed, moving to pick up one of many shirts strewn about her bedroom floor. Deeming it satisfactory with an appraising sniff, she shrugs it on and pads over to the window, aimless. The two visible moons hang like distant pearls, half-hidden under the murky waters of smog and light pollution, cold and glinting. Mischievous. Untouchable. 

Sometimes, on lonelier, moonless planets, Anakin stares out into the sky and lets the feeling bubble up in her chest, certain as gravity, pulling her everywhere and apart. The night stares back, black and unblinking, like it would swallow her up if she asked nicely. 

But here, on Coruscant, the night never leaves her lonely for long. Her eyes can follow infinite stretches of traffic, twinkling lights, those long reflecting lines stretching out and up forever. It's usually grounding, in a backwards sort of way, but tonight it just makes her feel empty. Listless. As if her body is too big for her, like all her organs are pinned in place on the inside so they don’t slip away. Being knighted at nineteen might do that to a person.

She doesn't know what makes her wander the empty halls in nothing but a thin robe and her sleep clothes until she's standing in front of Obi-Wan's empty quarters, her own old rooms, feeling every bit like a grounded teenager mustering the courage to ask for forgiveness and nothing at all like she’s earned her twenty-one years. There are a thousand things she could apologize for. She doesn't know where to start. She thinks about stepping inside for old time's sake, maybe to soothe the ache of her memories, but the light emanating from under the door stops her clear in her tracks.

Obi-Wan is supposed to be on Ryloth, finishing the campaign. She's supposed to be leading the Open Circle Fleet in her stead. She's supposed to be a lot of things, really, but instead, she's here. On Coruscant. In the temple. Not ten feet from where Anakin stands, and she can't breathe.

Sleepy but still awake, Obi-Wan's signature flickers warm and bright just feet behind the door, curling with interest as they sense each other. Before she has the mind to flee after being found out, the door slides open, bathing them both in a soft golden glow.

Red hair tumbles loose over Obi-Wan’s shoulders, frames her face like licks of fire in the low light. She looks tired. She looks like hell. She looks beautiful.

The muscles of Anakin's legs tighten with the memory of movement, but she stands, frozen in place, pinned down under Obi-Wan's gaze. She watches as confusion flits briefly across Obi-Wan’s features, but it's gone just as quickly as she steps aside, wordlessly gesturing for her to come in.

Anakin’s stomach flips as she crosses the threshold. She feels naked in the light, and she knows it's ridiculous, after all the times she's bared herself between countless missions and this new, careful thing unfurling between them, but she pulls her robe a little tighter anyway. The door slides shut behind her with a soft click.

Obi-Wan gives her a look like she might chide her for being up at such a late hour, but there's else something in her eyes that Anakin can't place. Something that digs up under her skin and festers. Even towering half a foot above her old Master, Anakin feels very small.

"I've only just gotten back planetside, so you'll have to forgive the mess," Obi-Wan says instead, the moment lost. She turns to the kitchen to fetch that old pair of mugs from the cupboard. "Tea? Caf?"

"Uh. Caf, please," Anakin says when she finds her voice, all low and gravelly with sleep. She clears her throat, shifts her weight awkwardly from foot to foot in the small foyer like her hindbrain can't decide which base instinct to follow. 

She wants to cry. She wants to run. She wants to press Obi-Wan up against the kitchen sink and suck bruises into her collarbones, press apologies into her skin. She wants to turn off the lights and fumble through that new language they were teaching each other with everything but their mouths. She wants to not have to think.

"You don't have to just stand there, Anakin. Go, sit. I'll have it ready in just a minute," Obi-Wan decides for her, nodding over her shoulder.

She's grateful for the direction. She can work with instructions, clear and real. It keeps her lucid. It takes some weight off of her shoulders she hadn't even realized she'd been carrying. She finds a suitable spot on the couch and plops down, plants her feet on the ground before thinking better of it, toeing off her slippers and pulling her legs up too, tucking them under her. It reminds her of those long hours on meditation mats in the very same room, knocking knees with her Master as she barely pretended to try to focus, squirming where she sat.

This new need to please would've been a nice trait to have as a teenager. Could've saved her a lot of trouble. Well, it could've saved her from _getting into_ a lot of trouble. She thinks about saying as much. She can almost imagine it. Obi-Wan would cross her arms over her chest, smiling, and reply in kind with a smart remark about clear hindsight. Anakin would scoff and laugh and pretend to be offended. It could be so _normal_.

The clink of a spoon against a teacup strikes her clean from that reverie, makes her prop her arm up, tip her chin into her palm, watching Obi-Wan's back as she sweetens her caf just the way Anakin likes. She'd admit to no one else that she truly hates drinking it black. 

Something traitorous, lecherous, deep in her belly wishes it could be like this, always. Easy, unfilled silences. This soft domesticity. Sharing space, signatures brushing up against each other like _hi, hello, it's you_. The quiet and safety of these private moments, worlds away from the battlefield. The smell of tea in the night.

"Let me know if I should add more cream," Obi-Wan says as she sets Anakin's cup on the low table in front of her.

"No, it's perfect," she replies, reaching down to take the cup in her hands and cradle its warmth near her face. She doesn't need to taste it to know it's exactly how she takes it. She'd drink it even if it were nothing but sludge and grounds, smiling with blackened teeth. "Thank you."

Obi-Wan sits next to her in the middle of the couch, leaving a diplomatic half cushion’s width between them. Their own personal no man’s land. She smiles at Anakin over the lip of her own drink.

“Care to tell me what you’re doing wandering the halls in the middle of the night?”

There it is.

“I was taking a walk,” she tries, feigning ambivalence.

“At-" Obi-Wan rolls back her sleeve and glances at her blinking vambrace, "-two-thirty in the morning?”

“Uh, yeah? Stranger things have happened.”

“Oh, I’m well aware of your strange brand of nocturnalism.” She smirks into her tea then lowers the cup, something like mirth glinting in her eyes. “I distinctly remember a time when the sound of my morning alarm was replaced by a crackling welding torch.”

Anakin rolls her eyes and tries to ignore the blush crawling up her neck, slurping loudly at her caf.

It earns her the huffs of a laugh. Obi-Wan's teacup clinks against the glass of the low table as she sets it down, turning it around a few times before leaning forward to brace her weight on her elbows. Anakin watches her, captivated, as she knits her fingers together, steepling her hands under her chin. The look Obi-Wan gives her is thoughtful and soft, but it sparks like flint, and burns right through her all the same. Nobody else in the universe has ever made her feel so seen.

“You don’t have to be so coy, Anakin," she says, looking her up and down. “I didn’t think you walked to my room in the middle of the night for a drink and a nice chat.”

It's a slow realization, but Anakin catches her meaning. She didn’t come here for that. _That._ Like the word is below them, a primal, unspeakable thing. It catches its barb in her mind, makes all the blood in her body redirect swiftly to her face. 

“I- no, I-'' she stammers. “I just couldn’t sleep. I didn’t expect you to even be back yet, really. I didn't even hear you were on your way. And you must be exhausted. I just thought. Well.”

Obi-Wan cants her head, expression unreadable. “So you _don’t_ want to.”

“I never said that. Ugh.” She scrubs her cool metal hand over her burning face and feels her half-empty mug being plucked from her. She peeks between her fingers and Obi-Wan is leaning over her in the narrow space between the couch and the table, blanketing Anakin in her shadow.

Anakin swallows thickly, disarmed and untethered as some terrible untapped well of shame pricks hot in her belly.

Obi-Wan speaks to her like she might startle at her voice, like one might coax an injured wild animal. Anakin tries and fails to arrange her face in a neutral expression, like she doesn't already give herself away with every labored breath.

“Then tell me what you want, Anakin.”

What she wants? There are no words for the things she wants. There’s so little space between them that even the whispers of her thoughts feel like shouting. Everyone on this side of the hallway should be able hear the way her heart rams against her ribcage in its frenzied attempt to escape. 

And Obi-Wan is right there, trapping her with the question in her eyes and her presence in the Force, gentle. Inquisitive. Sincere.

They are so impossibly close. They could crash right through each other and no one would be any wiser. 

_If she only leaned up, just a little, they’d be kissing._

It’s a niggling thing, just another traitorous thought in the back of her mind, but it digs in its heels and holds there, refusing to leave. For the first time, she doesn’t try to shake it. She doesn't know, until just then, what she is going to do.

She isn't sure who leans in first. Their lips meet dry and soft and clumsy, the warm cloud of their combined breaths a secret cocoon against the recycled air. She is still, so still, terrified that she’s finally pushed too far, made some grave, irrevocable error and then. And then.

Obi-wan sighs, and kisses her right back. 

It’s rapturous. It’s inevitable. It’s coming home. The slow drag of their lips against each other is dizzying. Electric. Life is unfolding and whirling in a kaleidoscope around them and they are blind to all of it. Nothing exists outside of these moments. Now and now and now.

Their signatures lap at each other like warring waves in that old, familiar way. Like _hello, it’s me. You know me, you’ve always known. Let me in, let me love you._

And Anakin does, with the whole of her body, feeling the stretch of her hamstring as she parts her legs, imagines parting her aching ribs to let the supple beat of her heart peek through.

They break for air and Obi-Wan crowds her against the couch, braces her hands beside Anakin’s head before diving back in. Anakin groans, licking shyly into her mouth, tasting tea and light and everything good in this universe all balled up into one human being. It's nothing like she imagined. It's perfect. It’s almost too much. 

When they part again, Obi-Wan cradles Anakin's face in the cup of her bare palms, warm and dry. The flush that colors her cheeks and the tips of her ears sends a shock of heat down Anakin’s spine so sharp she almost jumps. 

She’s never seen Obi-Wan like this before. Never seen the effects of her arousal written all across her face. Never like this, never so clearly. It’s always hushed curses and shaking hands in the dark, but here, on the couch, in the living room they used to share, Anakin feels like she’s seeing her for the first time all over again. It’s incredible in its own way, sucking the air from her lungs.

“Bed?”

Obi-Wan laughs like a sunrise, warm and full and shining. 

“Yes. Yes, alright.”


End file.
